Shaina Quotes

“Silly girl, he does not cast a shadow.”

“So, he does not. Is it his fault? If he is the magician’s slave he has no choice about what he will do in the matter of shadows. Have I a choice if Old Ash tells me to get wood?”

“Wood and shadows are not the same.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The Grey Lady said I would come begging for her help, and for her help I have come, though whether I shall beg is another matter.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“She was troubled to find herself so joyous in the face of such dark tomorrows, weird bargains, terrible uncertainties.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The past five nights I’ve felt the house demons watching me, watching what I do. I felt their whisperings. They also fear the magician. I will beware.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“There is a way to all things. I will make a way.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The air seemed full of the spell, alive with it, painful with it.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Always sensitive, part witch, as Barbayat said, now her transplanted soul became almost unbearably receptive.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Perhaps the young actor was bound in service to the magician, even belonged to him, was a slave, as Shaina herself was a slave.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“So, he does not. Is it his fault? If he is the magician’s slave he has no choice about what he will do in the matter of shadows. Have I a choice if Old Ash tells me to get wood?”

“Wood and shadows are not the same.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Shaina began to walk very fast over the mountain side and westwards towards the delicate, gloomily-shining fang of the witch’s mountain.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Shaina got to her feet and clenched her hands. Her eyes, chestnut-colored, almost copper in the fire gloom, were wide and full of hunger, but her mouth was set.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“All at once she saw a young man bound on a wheel of iron; his hair was black, his white body marbed with purple wounds, and his face forever empty.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Shaina, said the dawn under the door, wake up! Here comes Young Ash with beer in his belly as high as his eyes and here comes the day walking over the mountain, the day when the witch buys your maiden’s blood with her spell.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The curious enchantment of learning how he was to be called had worked its own spell. Yet the smoke in the iron bowl was dissolving her thoughts, and the room was floating up over Cold Crag, and she with it. Dasyel, her mind whispered to her, half asleep, the painless mouth supping so gently, gently. She began to imagine that the little grey witch was her child at her breast; perhaps, too, his child, something loved and vulnerable, seeking nourishment, which she gave gladly and without regret…She had an urge to stroke Barbayat’s mossy head.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The village sensed the supernatural had touched it, but it did not look twice at the slave girl. Yet.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Shaina saw herself for the first time, far better than in a mirror. Shaina loved herself, and knew herself for the first time, with pure and proper and needful love and the rare knowledge that only comes with objectivity. And that knowing and loving remembered another love.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“She was thin as a bone from the cruelty and the voyage, from sorrow and from fear, but she stood there straight and grim as the bitterest woman of the bluest blood has ever stood in chains after some war.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“One moment the stars were glancing like sharp knives across her face, then came a tumbling through fire, a smothering well of blindness, after which she lay becalmed, and felt the heaviness of mountains, piled on top of her.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“I will try to be happy in this sad land, if you will try to be kind.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“I don’t believe I tried hard enough. I don’t believe a spell bought with life’s blood is to be wasted.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Shaina’s body, a beautiful young girl; skin a transparent honey from the sun, lashes like long black reeds, hair like a night river running under and in rivulets over her maiden’s apple breasts, her skin, strong, calloused hands. Her soul looked at it with the old pang of disembodied love, and she thought, as before she had not: Supposing they wake and come down and find me? Will they notice how I am empty?”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The sky was a hollow bell, ringing with blueness. Burning vapor trails of broken cloud below, like blossom on a lake, upper air thin as eggshell, pierced with fragile rays like the slender strings of a harp. Through its alleyways of soundless sapphire fled Shaina’s soul.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“There had been flight before, but not like this flight. This flight was abandonment to terror, a silent scream of anguish and terror.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Shaina, I am here, here. See. This you have betrayed me to. I am your meaning and your life, as you are mine. But you left me, and look what they have done. Oh, look, look. Look down and see. This is your fault.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“I won’t lie down before Death and bare my throat for him. I too have teeth. I too have nails.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“Pared to spirit, her purpose remained like iron in the silver.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“She was well used to fear. Sometimes she might throw him a bone, or pat his head to still him, but he would not stop her returning to that city, that grey whiner at her heel.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“I have business to settle with Volk Volkhavaar, wrecker of lives and cities.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“She was altered, a girl no longer, only a creature of Will and Intention.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar

“The irony of her story is merely that her love became, in the end, her nature rather than her goal, the doorway rather than the house.”
― Tanith Lee, Volkhavaar